


Dating 101

by ohthelinsanity



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 06:59:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3641031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohthelinsanity/pseuds/ohthelinsanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Jean gives Eren flowers and tells him that he hates him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dating 101

It starts with a bouquet of flowers.

Eren goes to pick up the paper off the stoop when he sees them: yellow and a little bit premature, wrapped hastily in _Christmas_ wrapping paper and held together by a goddamn _bread tie._ The stems are still wet as he picks them up, looking left and down his old street. It’s still early, the sky tinted that bruised purple right before the sun breaks the horizon. Armin’s grandfather is the only sign of life at the house across the street, waving hello around his cup of tea like he does every morning. Eren returns the greeting lazily, tucking the paper under his arm and heading back to the house.

Inside, he unwinds the bread tie (honestly, _who_ thought to give a person flowers like this?) to put them in a vase of water when a card falls out and flutters to the ground.

_I fucking hate you_

_-Jean_

What the fuck.

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t understand.”

His sister cackles for the _umpteenth_ time, drumming the palms of her hands against the steering wheel. “Me neither. How did he find that paper? I didn’t know there was such a thing as Christmas frogs.”

“Sasha.”

“Can you ask him for me?”

Eren sighs, reaching for the daffodil Sasha had stuck behind his ear at the breakfast table that morning. He twirls it in his hand and thinks about plucking the petals off one by one: Jean’s an idiot, Jean’s a _fucking_ idiot. Jean’s an idiot, Jean’s a _fucking_ idiot. So on and so forth. But he decides against it, moving to put the flower in the breast pocket on his t shirt.

He tries to think of how this _should_ have gone down: there were far more predictable things for Jean to throw at his front porch. Like dog shit, or rotten eggs. After all, they’ve been fighting like petulant children for years. In retrospect, he was surprised a hoard of angry bees weren’t nestled in the flowers to begin with. “This would have been so much easier if something had just…stung me.”

Sasha grins like mad. “You’re allergic to bees. You’d be dead.”

Eren groans dramatically and lets his head thump against the window. “Exactly.”

 

* * *

 

He catches Jean right before their last period in the hallway, looking _calm_ and _collected_ and totally _not_ like he left a bunch of flowers on his stoop that morning.

“Oh, good,” Jean says casually, reaching out to flick the flower petals. “You got them.”

Eren feels completely out of his element and just _baffled._ He’s sure he’s adapted some weird stance standing rigid in the hallway, trying to come up with the right kind of words to approach this whole situation. He settles on, “Are they poisonous?”

Which you know, probably wasn’t the best thing to start with.

Jean, however, doesn’t look even mildly taken aback. “Nope,” he tells him with a pop of his lips.

“No part two where a swarm of bees comes to pollinate my shirt?”

“Hadn’t planned on that, no.”

“….are they even real?” he finally asks, plucking the flower out of his shirt to give it a good whiff.  He hears Jean sigh and looks up to find him looking a _little_ more like himself (exasperated and 100% done with his shit. Although, if Eren were honest he wasn’t close to 100%. Not even a little.)

“They’re _real.”_ Jean emphasizes, taking the flower and putting is back in his pocket. “I picked them out of my mom’s garden and everything.”

Okay. So the flowers were totally just….flowers. But there was one other thing to address. Eren reached into his pocket and pulled out the little card that had been stuck in the bouquet. “I fucking hate you,” Eren reads aloud. “Signed, Jean.” He flips the card to show Jean who nods.

“Yup.”

“So you hate me.”

“Absolutely.”

“….but you gave me flowers?”

“Uh-huh.”

Eren couldn’t help it; he whined a bit, scratching at his scalp. This was some Nancy Drew mystery shit. “Why?”

“Why do I hate you, or why did I give you flowers?”

“Both.”

Jean sighs, finally looking rightfully agitated. “I hate you _because_ I want to send you flowers.”

A blush creeps up on Jean’s face, and Eren can feel a similar heat crawling up his skin as well. Eren scoffs, hoping his darker complexion doesn’t make his blush seem so obvious. “Why the hell do you want to send me flowers?”

Jean looks away, and Eren can see pink all the way down to his _collarbone._ “I hear,” he clears his throat, still avoiding eye contact and starts again. “I hear you give flowers when you want to take someone on a date.”

Eren blinks, not quite sure what he heard. “A date?”

Jean moans, looking rather defeated. “Please don’t make me say it again.”

Eren knows his has to reply—he has to say _something._ But he doesn’t know how to sort out his feelings. Because _no_ isn’t the first thing that Eren wants to say; it isn’t even close. He’s left with an unfamiliar fluttering in his stomach and clammy palms and oh god Eren has to say something so—

“…where’d you get the wrapping paper with the frogs on it?”

The bell rings and Jean is gone and Eren is left alone to hit his head against the locker in peace.

 

* * *

 

The next morning, Eren wakes up before the ass crack of dawn, drives to Jean’s house, leaves a bouquet of wildflowers wrapped in Hanukah wrapping paper and one of Sasha’s hair ties on the porch, parks next door and _waits._

Jean nearly steps on them on his way out the door, but Eren feels himself smile when he sees him reach down and pick them up with care, cradling them in one arm as he reads the card he had left with the other:

_I fucking hate you, too_

_-Eren_

He starts the car and drives a lazy 5 miles an hour up to Jean’s house. When Eren lays on the horn, Jean practically jumps out of his skin, nearly dropping the flowers in the process. “Hey, asshole!” Eren shouts from the car, and Jean rolls his eyes in a way that has him surprised they don’t fall out of his skull. “Pick me up at 7!”

But then Jean is smiling, that sunny teeth-baring grin that he does. He nods and gives Eren a thumbs up, but Eren thinks he can do better, and blows a kiss his way before driving off.

 

* * *

 

Jean shows up at school 2 hours with ant bites on his hand, and even though Eren tells him 50 times _there’s no correlation, it wasn’t my fault I didn’t know there were ants but at least it’s not a bee?_ and Jean’s telling him he’s an idiot, they both can’t seem to wipe the smiles of their faces.

**Author's Note:**

> based off a comic that can be found here: http://aymmichurros.tumblr.com/post/112589624230/crushes-man-x


End file.
